Interesting Read

[Cosmolo]

Of course!!!!!!! But i believe you can do that WITHOUT insinuating that others train using fear, damage the relationship with their dog etc etc!! Thats the difference. I have some great trainer friends who i would not see eye to eye with regarding training. But they are still friends because they don't accuse me of abusing my dogs, making them fearful or ruining my relationship with them!

Edited January 8, 2009 by Cosmolo

[huski]

Of course!!!!!!! But i believe you can do that WITHOUT insinuating that others train using fear, damage the relationship with their dog etc etc!! Thats the difference. I have some great trainer friends who i would not see eye to eye with regarding training. But they are still friends because they don't accuse me of abusing my dogs, making them fearful or ruining my relationship with them!

Exactly - there is a difference between saying 'nope, that is not for me' and making your own choices, and saying 'I would never do that because using that method damages your relationship with your dog, uses fear, is not real success' etc. The former is with-holding judgment, the latter is not.

Edited January 8, 2009 by huski

[corvus]

So do you believe that those who use corrections in their training are not actually getting any success? That their relationship with their dogs are damaged or based on fear? I use corrections in my training but they do not build or encourage fear in my dogs. Do you think everyone who uses corrections in training, are making the same mistakes that you did and are doing the same "damage"?

No, I know that they are getting success because it works. It worked with Penny, too. It just depends on what you mean by success. I don't know what's going on with anyone else's dogs. I just know that what I thought was success turned out to be something else.

No, like I said, I wholly believe it can be done without the troubles I experienced. Perhaps without any ill effects at all, but I don't know because the nature of Penny's ill effects were so very subtle. Like I said before, if it weren't for that hare I would probably never have known. It wasn't something I could point my finger at and say "There, that's fear building in my dog." I might be able to see it now, but not at the time. I hope that it's not happening right in front of your eyes like it was in front of mine, because it really made me feel like crap when I realised years later. All I have is a warning, Huski. I don't know who it applies to if anyone.

For the record, my dog doesn't fear me. Most people would say we have a great relationship. She adores me and I adore her. She is very obedient and reliable. My warning is not about ruling through fear, which is a pretty obvious danger of using punishments. I'm more concerned about the subtle things that you don't pick up, like with Penny. If you haven't had a taste of magic, how do you know it gets better than what you have?

[SkySoaringMagpie]

Of course!!!!!!! But i believe you can do that WITHOUT insinuating that others train using fear, damage the relationship with their dog etc etc!! Thats the difference. I have some great trainer friends who i would not see eye to eye with regarding training. But they are still friends because they don't accuse me of abusing my dogs, making them fearful or ruining my relationship with them!

But I'm not seeing accusations of abuse here in this forum. I saw this instead:

Now my opinions are coloured by wild animals and soft dogs, and if I get a hard dog and discover I need punishments in my world after all, you'll all know where I will come for help.

That doesn't sound like "you lot are abusers" to me.

I'll happily admit that out there in doggie world you will find people who look at you as if you're Hitler if you have your dog on on chain leash, but in this discussion forum those people do not post as a rule.

[corvus]

I have gone so far as to explicitly say in this thread that I will not judge anyone who chooses to use punishments and thinks they can do it successfully. I have repeatedly pointed out that my opinions are only my opinions. What do you care what I think of punishments? If you think you are doing right by your dogs, then how can my relation of my own personal experiences possibly offend you?

I am not insinuating that you train through fear and have a bad relationship with your dogs. I said nothing of the sort. I have no freaking idea what you do with your dogs or how they relate to you and I didn't even ask because I don't care. I just said physical punishments subtly and insidiously damaged my relationship with my dog. It's not about you, folks, it's entirely about me.

You don't see me calling people out because they said positive methods can cause problems as well. That's because I didn't take it personally, as I'm sure it wasn't meant personally. Honestly.

Anyway, when you get passionate about a subject then you do put it out there for other people and say "this is our stance on this issue". It's like a religion. Could it be that they actually strongly believe that physical corrections and tools used to deliver them do more harm than good?? Need I remind you that in America, anyone can walk out and buy an e-collar or a prong and slap it on their dog with no professional advice? I know I'd rather they bought a clicker and a treat bag if that's the way they were going to do things.

[Cosmolo]

I really don't want to pick posts to bits. But there are plenty of statements in this thread that draw paralells between using aversives and training through fear and the 'long lasting' effects on the human- animal relationship.

Corvus- do you think that standing on a lead is different to a lead correction? I am interested to know why? :p

[corvus]

Well, I wouldn't do it, but the person that suggested it to me is a positive trainer with a lot of experience. She said it's not a punishment if the dog can't actually do it in the first place. A leash correction comes after the dog has started its jump. Standing on the leash doesn't enable it to start its jump. I personally think the difference is pretty slight, but I don't train dogs for a living.

If the dog already knows sit in some context, I would be pre-empting the jumping with that. If he doesn't, it's the single easiest thing to teach a dog. If he's knocking you over in the interim, then maybe you need to dedicate an afternoon to practicing when you're on the ball and can dodge the jumping. My mother has a dog that was very good at springing it on you when you weren't expecting it, but she wasn't big enough to knock you over. Not all that many dogs are, really, and a lot of those big ones aren't jumpers seeing as that would put them above your face and most people discover when they get a giant puppy that it isn't long before jumping up becomes a problem. I hope most people that get a giant puppy are warned not to let them learn to jump up.

[Just Midol]

I don't consider standing on the lead a correction IF the dog does not make an upward movement, the minute pressure is applied after the action I consider it a correction.

Though, in regards to dodging. If I were to stand out there with Montu and dodge him when he jumps (he still does a bit but I don't really care all that much) he'd have huge extinction bursts which means the behaviour would get worse before it gets better. Normal jumping is fine, but if I were to dodge (I've done it once before) he ends up leaping off the ground, I can dodge a few but he'd get one on me eventually and a leaping GSD even as a puppy is not something you want hitting you :p. I've managed to drop his jumping down just via verbal corrections and a physical correction with my hand (forcible grabbing his scruff and putting him on the ground) but ignoring/dodging wouldn't work, and imo, a purely positive method here could be dangerous so I've decided a combination is more likely to succeed without injury to myself, or the dog.

Part of the issue though is I let him do it a few times, and probably rewarded it with pats so it's breaking an existing learnt behaviour.

[corvus]

So what, slight pressure on a flat collar is now a correction? Oh dear. How can one walk a dog without corrections? What if you used a harness instead of a flat collar? Would that also be a correction?

Slight pressure on his collar is aversive to Kivi because he's not used to it. He's worn a harness since he was a puppy and wears a breakaway collar, so I hardly ever even touch the collar. Its only purpose is to hold his ID tag. But he's quite comfortable being steered with a hand on his harness and will happily go where you direct him.

So getting back on topic, if you had no check chain or prong and a dog was jumping up, you could put a harness on them and stand on the leash and you would be working within the "no physical punishments" thing whether you believed what you were doing was a physical punishment or not, right?

[Cosmolo]

Its about whether the dog believes its a physical punishment. If i have a harness and lead on and i stand on the lead, the dog lunges against it, thus feeling pressure on their shoulders or side, then stops- i would consider that to be a correction.

[Nekhbet]

If i have a harness and lead on and i stand on the lead, the dog lunges against it, thus feeling pressure on their shoulders or side, then stops- i would consider that to be a correction.

stops as in completely backs away from pressure or stops as in pulls but cannot travel any further?

a physical act only constitutes a correction if it stops the behavior. You see dogs walking down the street dragging their owners but they have a tight check chain on - there is no punishment there. Dogs that get regularly beaten by their owners stop seeing it as a punishment because they continue the behavior.

Its all subjective. Witholding a treat is a punishment too for some dogs.

So getting back on topic, if you had no check chain or prong and a dog was jumping up, you could put a harness on them and stand on the leash and you would be working within the "no physical punishments" thing whether you believed what you were doing was a physical punishment or not, right?

This is a problem within dog training ... its what the trainer believes and contorts it to be. What one person sees as a way of training another sees as cruelty. What one person calls a potato another calls it potAto

There are basic concepts to animal behavior. Its not black and white, its what effect that physical action has on the animal that dictates what it is. I slap my dogue on the side and he loves it, its a rough pat and he cuddles up for more - if I slapped another shy dog in the same manner it would probably shy and consider me hurting it when my own dog thinks of it as a reinforcer... potato, potAto ...

[corvus]

True, but possibly beside the point. Does the article mention slapping a dog on the side or pressure on a flat collar? I haven't actually read it because I'm away from home this week and on expensive mobile internet. Does it just mention tools that are used to give physical corrections? I wouldn't like to see such tools banned (although it wouldn't affect me because I don't use them), but I would happily encourage the public to avoid them, because in my mind, misuse of something designed to be aversive is worse than misuse of something designed to not be especially aversive. I got into a fight with my pup's trainer when she wanted to put a no-pull harness on him at 12 weeks because I believed it would be mildly aversive to him and he wasn't a puller so he didn't need it. Her argument was that he needed to learn now before he got big not to pull. I guess that probably saves lives. I declined to use it, but looking at the way the puppies in the class responded to it compared to the way they might respond to a leash correction with a check chain, I'd take the no-pull harness every time. I think a lot less can go wrong with it.